Skip to main content

The Parnassian Roots of Acmeist Poetics

  • Chapter
Crossroad of Arts, Crossroad of Cultures
  • 31 Accesses

Abstract

Both Parnassianism and pictorialism were instrumental in providing a robust common identity to the otherwise diverse collage of personalities that became known as the Acmeists.The cogent connection between poets of the school has been uniformly underestimated in part because these two unifying elements have been given little scholarly attention

Poets create their precursors.

(Jorge Luis Borges)

Ruined temples. Poetry…

…You were a Hyperborean,

One of those at the back of the north wind

Whom Apollo favored and kept going back to …

You learned the lyre from him and kept it tuned.

(Seamus Heaney “A Hyperborean”)1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Seamus Heaney, “A Hyperborean.” The New Yorker (Jan. 18 1999): 56.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Cf. Nikolai Gumilev, “Acmeism and the Legacy of Symbolism.” In Nikolai Gumilev on Russian Poetry, trans. David Lapeza (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977), 21–24.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Justin Doherty, The Acmeist Movement in Russian Poetry. Culture and the Word (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1995), 86.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Mikhail Kuzmin, “O prekrasnoi iasnosti,” Apollon 14 (1910): 5–9, 7.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Cf. S.A.Tokarev, ed., Mify narodov mira, vol. 1 (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsik-lopediia, 1980), 304. Remarkably, in her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), the founder of Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky, spoke of Hyperboreans as one of the races that inhabited the earth before human beings.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Osip Mandelstam, “The Morning of Acmeism.” In Osip Mandelstam, The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, trans. Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1979), 61–65, 65.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Cf. Nikita Struve, “Bog Akhmatovoi,” Pravoslavie i kul’tura (Moscow, 1992), 243–45, 244.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Elaine Rusinko, “Adamism and Acmeist Primitivism,” Slavic and East European Journal 32, 1 (1988): 84–97, 86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Valery Briusov, Dalekie i blizkie (Moscow: Skorpion, 1912), 144.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Cf. Renato Poggioli, “The Neoparnassians.” In Poggioli, The Poets of Russia 1890–1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 212–37.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Evelyn Bristol, “Acmeists and the Parnassian Heritage.” In Jane Gary Harris, ed., American Contributions to the Tenth International Congress of Slavists (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1988), 71–81.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Simon Karlinsky, “Nikolai Gumilev and Théophile Gautier.” In Boris Gas-parov, Robert P. Hughs, and Irina Paperno, eds., Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 327–36, 329.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Barry P. Scherr, “Gumilev and Parnassianism.” In Lev Loseff & Barry Scherr, eds., A Sense of Place Tsarskoe Selo and Its Poets (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1993), 242–60, 243.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Cf. Louis Allain, “U istokov poetiki N. S. Gumileva. Frantsuzskaia i zapad-noevropeiskaia poeziia.” In M. D. El’zon & N. A. Groznova, eds., Nikolai Gumilev. Issledovaniia i materialy. Bibliografiia (Saint Petersburg: Nauka, 1994), 235–50.

    Google Scholar 

  15. V. V. Weidlé, “Peterburgskaia poetika.” In Gumilev, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh (Washington: Victor Kamkin, Inc., 1962) vol. IV, V–XXXVI, IX.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Elaine Rusinko, “Acmeism, Post-symbolism, and Henri Bergson,” Slavic Review 41, 3 (1982): 494–510, 494.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Konstantin Mochulsky, “Klassitsizm v russkoi poezii,” Sovremennye zapiski 11 (1922): 368–79, 379.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Victor Terras, “Classical Motives in the Poetry of Osip Mandelstam,” Slavic and East European Journal 10, 3 (1966): 251–67, 253.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Clarence Brown, Mandelstam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 137.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Nikolai Gumilev, “Teofil’ Got’e.” In Gumilev, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. IV (Washington: Victor Kamkin, 1968), 386–94, 387.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Léna Szilárd, Russkaia literatura kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka (1890–1917), vol. I (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1983), 484–85.

    Google Scholar 

  22. S.V. Poliakova, Osip Mandelstam: Nabliudeniia, interpretatsii, neopublikovannoe i zabytoe (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1992), 9.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sergei Gorodetsky, “Nekotorye techeniia v sovremennoi russkoi literature.” In Poeticheskie techeniia v russkoi literature kontsa XIX—nachala XX veka (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1988), 90–96, 96.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Osip Mandelstam, Sobranie sochinenii v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Khudozh-estvennaia literatura, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  25. William Hardy, A Guide to Art Nouveau Style (North Dighton: JG Press, 1986), 8.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Cf. I. Koretskaia, Nad stranitsami russkoi poezii i prozy nachala veka (Moscow: RADIKS, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  27. Cf. Théophile Gautier, Les Grotesques (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), 1–39.

    Google Scholar 

  28. François Villon, “Ballade (of the Ladies of Bygone days).” In The Complete Works of François Villon, trans. Anthony Bonner (New York: David McKay Company, 1960), 39.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Cf. Georgy Ivanov, Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, vol. I (Moscow: So-glasie, 1994), 596.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Robert Sabatier, Histoire de la poésie française. La poésie du Moyen Age (Paris: Albin Michel, 1975), 351.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Cf. O. I. Fedotov, “Sonet Serebrianogo veka.” In Fedotov, ed., Sonet Sere-brianogo veka Russkii sonet kontsa XIX–nachala XX veka (Moscow: Pravda, 1990), 5–34, 21.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Cf. O. Fedotov, “Sonet v tvorchestve Anny Akhmatovoi.” In Problemy tvorch-estva i biografii A.A.Akhmatovoi (Odessa, 1989), 17–20.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Andrei Bely, “Budem iskat’ melodii (Predislovie k sborniku ‘Posle ra-zluki’).” In Bely, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1966), 546–50, 549.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Cf. Konstantin Mochulsky, Aleksandr Blok (Paris: YMCA-PRESS, 1948), 39.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Aleksandr Blok, “Intelligentsiia i Revoliutsiia.” In Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. IV (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1982), 229–39, 239.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Efim Etkind, “Demokratiia, opoiasannaia burei (O muzykal’no-poetich-eskom stroenii poemy A. Bloka ‘Dvenadtsat’).” In Blok i muzyka (Leningrad: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1972), 58–84, 58.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Igor Glebov (B. V. Asaf’ev), “Videnie mira v dukhe muzyki (poeziia A. Bloka).” In Blok i muzyka (Leningrad: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1972), 8–57, 14, 50.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Sam Driver, “Acmeism,” Slavic and East European Journal 12, 2 (1968): 141–56, 144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Copyright information

© 2000 Maria Rubins

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Rubins, M. (2000). The Parnassian Roots of Acmeist Poetics. In: Crossroad of Arts, Crossroad of Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62736-3_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62736-3_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-62738-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-62736-3

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics